Yamaha Education Blog » Yamaha confirms Jazz Experience prize fund

Pictured here: Julian Joseph and Richard Michael, two of the Yamaha jazz Experience competition judges.

I'm delighted to announce today that, in addition to the prizes for the three winners of the Yamaha Jazz Experience ensemble competition of prestigious London gigs at Ronnie Scott's, the 606 Club and the Bull's Head jazz club in Barnes, we will also provide a prize fund of £9,000 worth of Yamaha gear.

We're now receiving lots of video entries for the ensemble competition, from the UK's secondary schools, youth jazz orchestras, colleges, junior conservatoire departments, music services, various music organisations and venues. I've extended the deadline from 29 January to 12 February, since a number of entrants have had a delayed start to the term because of the arctic snow conditions which, as every year, took us by surprise!

So it's not too late to enter if you haven't already done so. Your ensemble's musicians must be aged between 11 and under-19 and must perform a blues and one other piece of your/their choosing which features jazz-style improvising. You must video it and send it to us with the completed application form. Competition rules and application forms are available here.

So what happens next? Well, on 1 March I have the privilege of working with two past winners of the Parliamentary Jazz Awards - presenter of Jazz FM's 'Yamaha Jazz Jam' Helen Mayhew and jazz-educator Richard Michael, who will shortlist the entries down to nine finalists. These nine ensembles will then perform at our finalists' event on Saturday 1 May at Cheltenham Jazz Festival, when our judging panel of world-class British jazz musicians and educators - Julian Joseph, Peter Ind, Andrea Vicari, Liane Carroll and Richard Michael - will choose three winners, who will be announced at the end of the concert and will be awarded their prizes.

Yamaha has a long history of supporting the UK's most gifted and talented young musicians, as they prepare to leave full-time music education and take their first steps into music careers. Our scholarship programmes began with classical and we've added rock and now jazz to this. But improvising remains a difficult-to-teach subject and I wanted to bring the power of some of the amazing artists and educators Yamaha works with to help improve access into jazz for those still at school. That's why we began the Jazz Experience project last March with a nationwide teacher improvising workshop tour, to help teachers who were interested but needed some help and guidance to improve their own skills and understanding.

A testament to the success of this phase of the project is that we now have a significant number of entries for the competition phase already in, from some of the teachers who came to our workshops last year. I'm thrilled by this as this will provide a legacy for many years to come. I'm very excited by the tremendous response we've had to the competition and wish everyone the best of luck.